Re: [PLUG] Reading Amiga floppies on x86 hardware

[Beldon Dominello <beldon@speakeasy.org>]

On Wednesday 04 April 2001 23:03, you wrote:
> With respect to a passing comment from the meeting:
>
> I don't think it is possible to read Amiga floppy disks using a standard PC
> floppy controller - you need an additional hardware solution.  This is true
> whether running Linux or Windows.  If anyone has other information, I would
> be really keen to hear it.  (Hard disks are another story, and are
> mountable.)
>
> From the Linux kernel source code for 2.4.3
> [ http://lxr.linux.no/source/Documentation/filesystems/affs.txt ]:
>
> "It's not possible to read floppy disks with a normal PC or workstation
> due to an incompatibility with the Amiga floppy controller"
>
> from [ http://cloanto.com/kb/3-118.html ]:
>
> "Amiga floppy disks cannot be read on PCs without installing special
> hardware. As Amiga users know, this hardware incompatibility has limited
> Amiga-PC data sharing for more than 10 years, and there is no way that
> software emulation alone can solve it: a PC cannot read Amiga disks
> without an additional hardware interface."
>
> You need a device like the Catweasel, which is an 8-bit ISA card that
> serves as a floppy controller that is rather more flexible than that of the
> standard PC.  (It can read [and write, under Linux] Apple II, Commodore,
> Amiga, and various Atari disk formats, among others.
>
> Info about Catweasel:
> [ http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/catweasel_e.htm ]
>
> Catweasel is made by a German company.  Their stuff is apparently
> available through "Software Hut", [ http://www.softhut.com/ ].  Softhut's
> site uses a slightly brain-damaged cgi store script, so I won't try to post
> a link - just search on Catweasel from the front page.  Their price is
> ~$100. Weirdly, Software Hut appears to be located in West Chester, PA,
> though I can't tell from the site if it is web-only.
>
> There's also a build-it-yourself solution, the "Amiga Floppy Reader
> Project", which runs through the parallel port.  A cursory check reveals
> that the site is unavailable, and Google doesn't have it in its cache.
>
> If you've got an Amiga handy, you can transfer disk images via serial,
> floppy or network.  (Any of which are a major pain for my poor old A1000.)

Thanks for clarifying this.  In fact I've got an A600 which should still 
work.  That'll also solve my problem of translating my old ProWrite files to 
pure text.


______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group       -      http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  -  http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug